00:00:00
Tonight on Dateline. I don't remember if I cried. I don't even think I cried. It's shock. Complete shock.
00:00:11
Oh, f***. I need medical set backup units. The longer time goes on without him, it's really hard.
00:00:20
That's how it ended. This is how it started. He took a gun and put it to my head.
00:00:27
It wasn't until I heard the click that I realized it wasn't loaded. I let him take Marshall.
00:00:35
He had the boys run drills and shoot live ammunition over their heads. What were they turning into living with him?
00:00:41
Monsters. He was talking about police officers. If any cop ever got in my face, I'll kill him.
00:00:48
Let's call it what it was, an execution. I think he's one of the most evil people we've ever dealt with.
00:00:54
The threat of death was very real from him. Would I end up leaving or end up in a bag in the ocean?
00:01:03
A father leads his sons down a dark and deadly path. You'll be in on the chase to catch him before he can kill again.
00:01:11
I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. here's Keith Morrison with on a dark deserted highway
00:01:27
it was deep country dark just after 2 a.m. as a small-town Montana deputy cruised home
00:01:43
End of a quiet shift. It was May 2017, and outside his car, the air was fresh with the smell of new planting.
00:01:54
He was happy. He'd be home early for once. And quite suddenly, a car whistled past his patrol vehicle, just like this.
00:02:11
here's the actual video the deputy giving chase as the driver of that speeding chevy suburban
00:02:24
seemed to want him to and then I'm just trying to get some help here. My officer is not answering me now.
00:02:38
What? Yeah, I don't like that he's not answering me. I hate that. The reason became apparent when backup finally arrived.
00:02:46
Be with the deputy's car. Door opens. Mile marker 109. Check it out. Oh, f***. I need medical. Send backup units.
00:03:03
As EMTs roared off to attend to the deputy, the speeding suburban vanished down the highway,
00:03:09
and word was flashed to every available law officer from miles. I just said, God, come ride with me.
00:03:16
All pulled into one of the most furious chases you've ever seen. A Wild West gun battle that speeds up to 140 miles an hour.
00:03:27
Dead feeling. Scariest moment of my life. Until two hours after it began. It happened just over yonder under the big Montana sky
00:03:45
and instantly became one of the most notorious crimes in Montana history. But it was much more than just one crime or even a series of crimes.
00:03:56
this crazy tale of the shapeshifter, missionary man to madman to monster. I think that this is probably one of the most savage and dangerous people that I've ever seen.
00:04:12
I was in fear for a very long time, a very long time, I want to say 30 years. I don't remember if I cried. I don't even think I cried.
00:04:24
It's shock, complete shock. But the story, the story we have pieced together, year by year, person by person,
00:04:38
begins long before the night on the highway. More than 50 years before, in the small town of McCammon, Idaho,
00:04:46
where two boys met in grade school, Michael Colbia and a kid named Chip. Michael remembers it to this day.
00:04:55
We became fast friends and did lots of adventurous things together. I mean, during the summer, you had no supervision whatsoever.
00:05:03
And as teens, Mike and Chip got mixed up in some rather unwholesome activities. Until it was Chip who turned things around.
00:05:13
He moved in with a bishop in Chubbuck, Idaho. And that bishop started getting him to read the Book of Mormon, the Bible.
00:05:26
Chip found religion and got Mike back on a righteous path. It had a profound impact on me.
00:05:32
I threw away my drugs and went on a Mormon mission within six months. Which Chip did too, set off on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
00:05:44
and when he did, he sent a note to his girlfriend. A note so remarkable, she saved it all these years.
00:05:53
You very special to me Tracy Keep up the good work Continue to do what your Heavenly Father wants you to do and I know you be happy I love you Chip
00:06:05
The woman was Tracy, Chip's sweetheart. We had talked about getting married when he got back off of his mission.
00:06:13
And in my culture, in the LDS culture, you know, you kind of waited for your missionary,
00:06:17
and you live happily ever after. And sure enough, when Chip returned, all grown up,
00:06:25
Now going by his given name, Lloyd Barris, he married Tracy in the Idaho Falls LDS Temple.
00:06:33
Sealed, as Mormons believe, for time and all eternity. Tracy did her best to be a good wife.
00:06:42
She gave Lloyd two healthy boys, Marshall and Jeffrey. Names you'll want to remember.
00:06:49
He was actually a really good dad. He'd play with the boys. He was really proud of them, you know, marshaled everything he did.
00:06:59
He thought it was funny. Lloyd was a good provider, worked in construction. And at the heart of things, he was a God-fearing man.
00:07:08
He'd been a missionary, after all. And he made it clear, said Tracy, he was the sole arbiter of right and wrong.
00:07:16
He wanted to let me know right away that I was his wife, and wives are supposed to submit to their husbands.
00:07:23
If I even slipped up and I said hell or damn, he'd reach across the table and slap me across the face.
00:07:31
Because saying hell or damn is a bigger sin than slapping your spouse across the face.
00:07:37
Clearly, yes. But she had ears. They hadn't been married long. When she could tell, she said, Lloyd began getting mixed up in something secret.
00:07:48
The phone calls began from people she didn't know. And they'd talk in code if I answered the phone.
00:07:56
They'd say, this is the password, tell him 7 o'clock, he'll know what it means. He wouldn't tell her where he was going, she said, but when he returned, he'd rant like some 19th century fundamentalist prophet.
00:08:07
And he started going on and on about how the government had no right to tax us. Like if he'd get a speeding ticket, he'd go to court so he could argue with the judge over the government's role in our lives and how they were trying to control us.
00:08:21
And all the while, she said she lived in fear of his moods, his sudden flashes of anger, his violence.
00:08:29
Back then, we didn't talk about abuse. And if you did, what you were told is, you need to quit provoking him.
00:08:36
Until Tracy grew so desperate, she went on her own to talk to her LDS bishop. What happened?
00:08:42
He called Lloyd in, and Lloyd made it just seem like I was just having a hormonal mood swing and that he'd never done anything bad.
00:08:54
Marriage is sacred, the bishop reminded them. They should keep trying. How trapped did you feel?
00:09:01
You'd like to leave, but you've been sealed in the temple. But it did not get better, she said. Far from it.
00:09:08
If I didn't do exactly what I was told, my punishment was marital rape. and there was a time when he took a gun and put it to the temple of my head and fired it,
00:09:22
and it wasn't until I heard the click that I realized it wasn't loaded. Good God.
00:09:28
The thing that was the most scary was when he put the bullets back in the gun and handed it to me
00:09:33
and said, if you hate me so bad, kill me. That's when I realized that I had to get out of there because one of us was going to die.
00:09:40
But how? She had those boys, Marshall and Jeffrey. What would happen to them? To all of them.
00:09:52
When we come back, Tracy escapes from one nightmare into another. Lloyd had snatched their boys.
00:10:01
My downstairs neighbor called me and she said, I think he took them. What was that like?
00:10:06
Crying and crying. And it wouldn't be easy to get them back. Would I end up in a bag in the ocean?
00:10:26
They were young still, when Tracy finally had her fill of Lloyd Barris. 35 years to go, before the gunfight on the highway that led us to this tale, and to this man.
00:10:40
Back then, Lloyd was convinced he was right. Tracy couldn't take him anymore. He'd been about to take a trip to Alaska to work on a construction project.
00:10:49
Seemed like now or never. So she said it. He was very upset when I told him I wanted a divorce.
00:10:56
And he asked me, Would you mind if I at least took Marshall with me for a few weeks and I'll bring him back?
00:11:04
I thought he'd be back very shortly. And I was wrong. He didn't come back for a long time.
00:11:10
A long time. Six months. Didn't return with son Marshall until the divorce was final.
00:11:16
It was a quick 20-day divorce with shared custody of the boys. Tracy said Lloyd asked to reconcile, and she said no.
00:11:24
And Lloyd ransacked her apartment, threatened her. My boss at work was very concerned about my safety.
00:11:32
I'm not surprised. She said, just get out of town for the weekend. and get away from him so you're safe.
00:11:38
So Tracy did just that, and also made a decision she would forever regret. She asked a neighbor to watch Marshall, not quite four,
00:11:48
and Jeffrey, who was two, while she was away. She called me, and she said, I think I made a mistake Lloyd showed up and he asked if I could let him into your apartment to just get a jacket for the boys And she said but Tracy he came out with bags and bags of their stuff
00:12:05
I think he took them. What was that like? Crying and crying and not knowing what to do or where to turn.
00:12:12
Nor did she know where he had taken them. Didn't know he was now more than 700 miles away in Tacoma, Washington.
00:12:19
or that he joined an LDS ward there where he'd caught the eyes of some ladies who had a friend named Deborah,
00:12:27
a newly divorced mother of two daughters. They said there's a young man at church
00:12:33
that is single and looking. They gave him my phone number. He had two little boys.
00:12:40
And then we started dating. Who called whom? He called me. There was a lot of good chemistry between us.
00:12:49
And he seemed like a nice guy? Yes. He was a nice guy, and he was a great provider.
00:12:57
She knew only the story he told her, and she liked that story. I prayed to know if he was the one for me, and the answer was yes, so we got married.
00:13:10
Another temple sealing for time and all eternity Just five years after Lloyd's first eternal sealing to Tracy
00:13:20
Who had no idea Deborah even existed I was elated and I took on those two little boys and loved them and cared for them as though they were my own
00:13:31
They weren't, of course, her own boys, that is In fact, Marshall and Jeffrey's mom Tracy back in Idaho was frantically looking for them until she finally learned where they were.
00:13:44
Did you ask for advice from a lawyer or anything about getting them back? Yes. I went to see an attorney and we were trying to at least make him bring them back for my 50% custody.
00:13:59
Tracy didn't call the police. She didn't know who to call. Back then, there were no Amber Alerts.
00:14:04
The states didn't cooperate like they do today. The FBI rarely got involved in child custody cases, so Tracy's attorney told her this.
00:14:14
He said, we bring them back and all he has to do is kidnap them again and take them to another state.
00:14:19
And we have to start all over. And you and I both know that's what he'll do. Oh, my.
00:14:24
And I said, I think I need to go kidnap him back. And he said, don't do that. He said, if you do that, you don't have a leg to stand on legally and I can't protect you.
00:14:35
By that time, it was too late. Lloyd had moved his new family a world away. They'd moved to the Aleutian Islands, Dutch Harbor, Alaska.
00:14:46
Nearly 4,000 miles from Tracy in Idaho. And there are no commercial flights. I'm a waitress making $2.50 an hour plus tips.
00:14:56
Now what do I do? Yeah. And the terror also of would I end up leaving or end up in a bag in the ocean.
00:15:05
Meanwhile, Deborah, with no idea at all of Lloyd's past, or that he had kidnapped Marshall and Jeffrey from their mother,
00:15:12
gave Lloyd another son a year later. They called him Alma. There is a character in the Book of Mormon who is a very valiant character,
00:15:22
and that's why Alma is Alma. Alma would soon have two more sisters. bringing the number of children, his, hers, and theirs, to seven.
00:15:32
Lloyd decided to build a house for his growing family, and he bought land in Anchorage,
00:15:38
where he began getting all secretive again, this time with one of his neighbors.
00:15:44
And pretty soon the two of them started thumbing their noses at local ordinances
00:15:48
and refusing to pay taxes, that sort of thing. Two outlaws against the government.
00:15:54
Once he met this guy, it was as though they had a marriage instead of us. Nearly all his life, Lloyd had been, or claimed to be, a faithful Mormon.
00:16:05
But now that was changing too. The church wasn't enough for him anymore. He stopped going to his LDS ward and began attending a different sort of meeting altogether.
00:16:16
Sounds like you discovered a better life. Oh, with Amway. So can you. Amway. Ads like this spoke to Lloyd.
00:16:25
He wanted a better life. He wanted his own business. He embraced the booming multi-level marketing company
00:16:32
with the same all-in faith he had once given to his church. An allegiance that seemed almost fanatical to Deborah
00:16:39
called himself Diamond Lloyd Barris. But when Lloyd's Amway distributorship didn't take off...
00:16:47
He was so angry at me because he wasn't getting any people to join him in this Amway business.
00:16:53
And it was all my fault because of the sadness that was on my face. And he gave me the hand mirror and made me fake a smile with it in front of my face.
00:17:06
He said, you will hold that smile all night long just so that you can know that this is how it has to be.
00:17:14
And of course, I was absolutely terrified. and needless to say there wasn't a lot of sleep that happened on my end that night
00:17:22
surely it couldn't get any worse but of course it did coming up he said if you try to leave i will take you out back and shoot you in the head
00:17:39
it was time to escape but how that's when i started devising a plan when dateline
00:17:47
continues. There was a moment that might have saved them The boys that is The two sons of Lloyd Barris and his first wife, Tracy.
00:18:08
Lloyd had snatched Marshall and Jeffrey and taken them far away to Alaska, where, eventually, Lloyd told Deborah the truth.
00:18:16
And when the boys were around five and three, Deborah secretly arranged for them to contact their mother.
00:18:23
Deborah would sneak away from time to time and let them call me from a payphone,
00:18:28
but she wasn't allowed to say where they were. Then, a couple of years later, Lloyd agreed to let the boys visit Tracy in the lower 48,
00:18:37
but with a warning. I'll come down there with a gun and you guys will be sorry if you pull any funny business.
00:18:43
And I wanted to just keep them. She consulted a child psychologist who said, don't do it.
00:18:50
Well, what she told me is the worst thing I could do is kidnap him back. She sent the boys back to Lloyd.
00:18:57
No idea what she was sending them to. Did he have many weapons in the house? He had a closet full of weapons and was constantly had his eye on the next one.
00:19:11
In the evenings after we put the children to bed, he would practice fight moves in front of the mirror
00:19:16
and, you know, tell me he wanted to become a mercenary. He began acting like the star of his own action movie.
00:19:23
He disappeared for days at a time. CIA missions, he called them. When a neighbor reported Lloyd for breaking county environmental codes,
00:19:32
a neighbor who happened to have a black lab puppy. He came in the house and got a pistol out of the closet.
00:19:40
So I peered through the door and witnessed him put that pistol behind that puppy's ear
00:19:48
and shoot it in the head. And then he picked it up by the tail and flung it around and tossed it into the woods.
00:19:56
Deborah wanted out, and Lloyd seemed to sense it. He said, if you try to leave, I will take you out back and shoot you in the head,
00:20:06
and in God's word, it says I can do that. What did it feel like to be you listening to these things?
00:20:13
That's when I started devising a plan. And then one evening at supper time, Lloyd announced he had to work all night on a local construction job.
00:20:24
He said, I'm going to take Marshall with me because I need extra hands. Marshall was 12 at the time.
00:20:30
And after he left, I started loading up all the things. And then one by one, I took a child out of their bed and put them in the Suburban.
00:20:41
and off we went. One of the hardest parts of leaving was that I couldn't take those two little
00:20:51
boys that I had mothered for eight years. Yeah, they were his boys. And Marshall, of course,
00:20:57
wasn't there. Jeffrey, I had to leave sleeping in his bed. There was one boy who left the house that
00:21:04
night, along with his four sisters. Remember Alma? He was now six years old. I remember asking my mom,
00:21:13
can we take Jeffrey? And she was not legally allowed to. It would have endangered us taking
00:21:20
him. I know how much my brothers loved me, and it was so difficult that we had to leave them.
00:21:27
Deborah went straight to a domestic violence shelter in Anchorage and called her LDS bishop.
00:21:32
And he went to the airport in a disguise to purchase airplane tickets for me and my family because he knew the danger that was involved.
00:21:45
He had actually not looked like himself for fear of what Lloyd might do. Yeah. As soon as we left the women's shelter, this is how afraid we were.
00:21:56
When we got in the taxi, I said, everybody lay down, because I didn't want him to recognize us.
00:22:09
So we rode to the airport, everybody laying down. Did you have a sense of safety or freedom as you took off and flew away?
00:22:21
Yes. I knew that we were finally safe for a while. until he figured out that we were no longer in the States.
00:22:31
Lloyd Barris was not a man to let something like this go, even after Deborah filed for divorce.
00:22:39
Less than a year later, thousands of miles from Alaska, there was a knock at Deborah's door.
00:22:48
Coming up. He had a knife in his boot and a gun in the small of his back, and he pulled me off into the trees.
00:22:56
And while in Alaska, Lloyd had been training soldiers for his own militia. He had the boys convinced that there was going to be a war with the U.S. government.
00:23:05
He'd have them run drills and shoot live ammunition over their heads. The Curious Thing About Lloyd Barris
00:23:25
The zombie had not changed at all Still a fine man, dedicated and hard-working To his wife Deborah, he had become frightening
00:23:33
And 28 years now before that terrifying night in Montana, it was terror she felt as she ran from him.
00:23:42
Only Marshall and Jeffrey were left behind with Lloyd, who, just as I could expect, was doing all he could
00:23:48
to track down his missing family. After I left, he had threatened all of my friends from church
00:23:54
that if anybody helped me in any way, that he would have been He would kill their pets and their children.
00:24:02
Debra knew she had to be evasive. She went to Arizona first, and then she moved again to a city on Washington's Puget Sound.
00:24:11
It was where her parents lived. So, not evasive enough, because a year later, who was standing on her doorstep?
00:24:20
Lloyd went into a car dealership and pretended as though he wanted to purchase a vehicle.
00:24:25
he asked the person that was helping him to he gave him my social security number and asked him
00:24:32
to run it and find out where the person was and because of that he came knocking at the door
00:24:42
yep i immediately went into hollywood actress mode and um started telling him how sorry i was
00:24:50
that I had left and how I couldn't wait for us to get back together. All of this just so that I
00:24:56
could keep my parents and my children safe. How did he react to this? He believed it. He had a
00:25:02
knife in his boot and a gun in the small of his back. So I asked him to please take a walk with me.
00:25:09
So we walked, you know, a mile or so down the road and he pulled me off into the trees and
00:25:15
proceeded to try to undress me, and I began to cry, so he stopped. And we got back to the house with my parents and the kids.
00:25:28
And then, as if by providence, a visitor stopped by. The bishop of our church at the time noticed a strange vehicle in the driveway,
00:25:38
and he stopped to see if everything was okay, which put a little bit of excitement in the moment,
00:25:44
and he reached for his knife. Lloyd did. Reached for his knife when the bishop is there.
00:25:52
Because he felt threatened by someone that he didn't know. And I said, listen, this is the bishop.
00:25:58
He's just checking on us. With false promises of a reunion soon in Alaska, Deborah talked Lloyd into leaving.
00:26:07
As soon as he left the driveway, I started trying to figure out what we were going to do next
00:26:13
because now he had entered our safe place. And thus began an odyssey all too familiar to the victims of domestic violence.
00:26:22
A haze of hotels and friends' homes, couch surfing, always accompanying fear. I would not be sitting here doing this interview with you
00:26:35
if I hadn't had the presence of mind to get away when we got away. Were you afraid of him in the years after you left Alaska with your family and lived in various places?
00:26:48
No, I was not so acutely aware of the danger that my mom was in. He called us one time. I said, this is your son, Alma.
00:26:58
And he said, I would like to talk to you, but I can't. It crushes your heart. It was difficult growing up without a dad.
00:27:07
Or maybe lucky. Lloyd went back to Alaska, found a third wife through Amway, fathered five more children.
00:27:18
Later, Tracy's boys, Marshall and Jeffrey, told their mom about life with Lloyd.
00:27:23
The boys told me that their dad would be gone on binges and not come home for days,
00:27:29
so they'd rob homes to get money for food. The boys should be soldiers, Lloyd decreed.
00:27:35
They had to be made ready. Lloyd felt he was in a righteous militia. He had the boys convinced that there was going to be a war with the U.S. government.
00:27:47
But he'd have them run drills and shoot live ammunition over their heads. These are the little boys you gave birth to?
00:27:53
Yeah. What were they turning into living with him? Monsters. They were conditioned to have such aberrant beliefs and aberrant behaviors.
00:28:04
Jeffrey scares me to death. Jeffrey's eyes glaze over and he looks at you like there's no soul.
00:28:12
When the boys became young adults, they scattered. But before long, Lloyd and Jeffrey met again.
00:28:20
A long, slow, and violent endgame had begun. Coming up, a showdown in the desert.
00:28:30
My phone rang and an investigator told me there was something weird happening in Death Valley
00:28:35
and a lot of very odd things happen out there. When Dateline continues. Lloyd Barris just wasn't a one-woman man.
00:28:55
In the summer of 1999, 18 years to go until the night it all came down in Montana,
00:29:01
Lloyd was living in Idaho with a new girlfriend. By then, Lloyd had gone through three wives, had ten children,
00:29:09
and told his childhood friend Michael Cobia it was all the government's fault. He proceeded to tell me how he'd tried to build a home in Alaska,
00:29:18
and they wouldn't let him, and he did it anyway, and that his wife got scared and took off with the kids.
00:29:27
Lloyd opened up, vented to his old friend. After that woman left him, he said everything just went wrong.
00:29:35
He had refused to pay child support and lost every one of his professional licenses.
00:29:40
There was a lot more to the conversation. Oh, yes, there was. Lloyd wasn't just angry at the government.
00:29:47
He was talking about police officers. The gist at the end was that if any cop ever got in my face I kill him But just a few months after that conversation Lloyd was on the run so he wouldn have to face the law In March of 2000 he been summoned to an Idaho court on DUI and other charges
00:30:10
But instead of showing up, he and the girlfriend skipped town. And at the wheel of the getaway car, Lloyd's son, Jeffrey, then 20 years old.
00:30:20
They drove through the night, and as morning approached, were heading north on US 95,
00:30:26
60 miles from Las Vegas, where John Kunag, a freshly admitted highway patrolman,
00:30:32
was on his way to an overtime assignment. I was probably doing about 75, and I saw a car coming up from behind me.
00:30:40
All I see was headlights. They just kept accelerating. My thoughts were, this guy's crazy, I need to stop him.
00:30:47
That was just kind of a knee-jerk response. I was out here not familiar with this area.
00:30:51
Didn't know I didn't have radio coverage on my, to talk to dispatch. All right. No way to call for backup.
00:30:58
Still, all alone, in the dark, John threw his lights and sirens on and pulled the car over.
00:31:07
And then he got out to ask the driver for his license and registration. There was a female in the back seat behind the driver.
00:31:17
Two men in the front? Two men in the front. Jeffrey was behind the wheel. Lloyd was in the passenger seat.
00:31:24
And next to his leg was a shotgun. So I asked the driver how many more weapons he had in the vehicle.
00:31:32
And he looked right at me, what we call a thousand-yard stare, just looking right through you.
00:31:37
And he said, as many as I want. So this was trouble. John went back to his car and tried again to call backup.
00:31:45
And this time he got through, except the nearest officer was 18 miles away. And as John took that in, Jeffrey, still in his own car, did something strange.
00:31:57
He was calling me, yes, come back up here. And after I kept telling him I wasn't coming back up,
00:32:04
the female in the left rear seat, she got out and said she needed to talk to me.
00:32:10
By then it seemed obvious. They wanted to lure him back to shoot him. So John stayed out of sight and kept all his spotlights pointed at the barrister's car.
00:32:20
When backup arrived, what happened then? We went to make a, what we call a high-risk stop,
00:32:27
which is where we have our weapons out, get on the loudspeaker, and call the driver back to you.
00:32:32
And when we did that, they took off. Hit the gas. Correct. By the time John got back to his car, Lloyd and Jeffrey and the woman were already out of sight,
00:32:41
but he knew the road would lead them to a town called Beatty. If they had turned right in the town of Beatty instead of turning left,
00:32:49
it would have stayed a Nevada problem and not become a California problem. But Lloyd and Jeffrey turned left.
00:32:56
And that's when they started shooting at the cops who were chasing them as they headed straight into California's Inyo County,
00:33:03
District Attorney Tom Hardy's jurisdiction. My phone rang and an investigator told me
00:33:09
there was something weird happening in Death Valley. Death Valley. It's several hundred miles of very remote, very rugged territory,
00:33:20
and a lot of very odd things happen out there. Wasn't Charlie Madsen picked up in Inyo County?
00:33:26
He was. So it came as no surprise to the prosecutor that three people with a carload of guns fleeing from law enforcement
00:33:33
ended up in Death Valley. Well, I don't think they had any idea they knew where they were going at this point.
00:33:39
Jeff drives the BMW off into the desert and almost immediately becomes stuck. They bailed out of the car and they grabbed three rifles and three handguns.
00:33:50
Was it armed for Armageddon or what? Mr. Barris seemed to be very fond of firearms.
00:33:54
Though it was springtime, it was hot. And with law enforcement not far behind, Jeffrey, Lloyd, and his girlfriend lugged their arsenal for miles across the desert.
00:34:04
and then dug a makeshift bunker that they could not hide from the unforgiving Death Valley sun.
00:34:11
They had lots of firearms, but they had no water. As the standoff went on, some of the cops said they could hear moaning
00:34:18
coming from the parched holdouts in the bunker, and they couldn't help but hear the gunfire.
00:34:25
And then CHP had a helicopter about 11.30 that morning, ended up being shot down by Jeff.
00:34:31
he fired a rifle and was able to put a round through the oil cooler in the helicopter
00:34:36
and basically disabled it. He brought it down? Yeah, they basically had to do an emergency landing in the desert.
00:34:43
By some miracle, all four on board survived. But all was not well in the bunker.
00:34:50
Eighteen hours after the high-speed chase began in Nevada, they gave up. Walked out of their bunker and straight into the lines of law officers who had them surrounded.
00:35:01
Lloyd and his sons had had brushes with the law before. But this time, there'd be consequences.
00:35:08
Big consequences. Coming up, Lloyd has a strange wish. And turns on his own son.
00:35:21
Jeff was the person who was really shooting, not me. The jig was up for Lloyd and Jeffrey Barris.
00:35:42
Lloyd had opened fire on police during that high-speed chase from Nevada to California.
00:35:48
In Death Valley, son Jeffrey had shot down a CHP chopper, the only time in history that's happened.
00:35:54
And to anybody hearing this story it sounds like they were desperados out to kill as many people as they could and go down in a blaze of glory
00:36:05
You don't see it that way? I guess at the time, no. In Jeff's initial interviews, he was almost apologetic.
00:36:13
Every time they asked, well, did you shoot at this person? Yeah, I hope I didn't hurt anybody.
00:36:17
I mean, it was bizarre because you're right. It seems like they're desperados out to get somebody.
00:36:22
But that's not how it was, said Lloyd. No. The real story? Someone, said Lloyd, was out to get him.
00:36:34
I just thought you'd choose, you know. But you didn't. For me, I wanted to be that.
00:36:39
I just wanted to be dead. That's it. Hours after Lloyd was taken into custody in Death Valley,
00:36:45
tapes were rolling as Lloyd went on a hot rant. Was that what this was all about?
00:36:50
You were trying to commit suicide? It's totally stress their back. I've grinded too many bad cops over too many years.
00:36:58
When you're ready to die, and you can't f***ing get them engaged, how are you going to get this son of a bitch engaged, right?
00:37:05
Much of Lloyd's interview just didn't make sense. One time I wrote a letter to the President Bush.
00:37:11
Did you? It worked out great. Uh-huh. All guys being great is that, you know everything.
00:37:17
Some of the statements I certainly thought were delusional. Doctors gave Lloyd psychological evaluations
00:37:22
and diagnosed him with paranoid personality disorder. So before he could go on trial,
00:37:28
he was sent to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. Jeff took a plea deal and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
00:37:36
For crimes he said he was forced to commit. Jeffrey told me when the shootout took place that he hesitated
00:37:45
and his dad said, you're either with me or against me and those that are against me die.
00:37:51
And he held a gun on him. Well, that was enough to trigger Jeffrey's wild animal response
00:37:58
and he just went crazy. When Lloyd was well enough to tell his part of the story,
00:38:04
he had a slightly different version. Lloyd was always very coy about whether he fired any shots or not.
00:38:12
It's like, yeah, Jeff was the person who was really shooting, not me. Did it strike you as a betrayal of his own son, that he would first of all order him around to get him involved in this pickle?
00:38:21
And then when it came time for him to make a deal, say, well, really, you know, he did most of the shooting. I didn't.
00:38:27
Well, I mean, short answer, yeah. So, his father against son, Lloyd agreed to plead no contest and was sent to prison for 15 years, a decade less than Jeffrey.
00:38:40
From prison, Lloyd wrote to his other son, Alma, and invited him to visit. It kind of made it seem like it was all Jeffrey's fault.
00:38:50
I just was wondering what it was like when you realized that he was BSing you. It's disappointing. I was hoping that he would apologize.
00:38:59
To Alma, that is, for not being there, for him, for everything. That didn't happen.
00:39:06
Lloyd quietly served 13 of the 15 years to which he'd been sentenced. And then, on January 3rd, 2013, he was released, walked out of prison a free man, moved to Bakersfield, found himself another girlfriend.
00:39:24
Some attorneys joke about having lifelong cases, and this is one where it never goes away.
00:39:29
No, not this one. Because once he was out of prison, the old Lloyd began to reemerge.
00:39:36
And that old boy discovered something new, for him at least, social media, where he documented his life and beliefs.
00:39:48
I was watching his Facebook, seeing the stuff that he would post. Predictions of an imminent military coup, fevered allegations of government genocide campaigns, photos of lynchings.
00:40:04
Alma was alarmed. I got a bad vibe from it, and I called his parole officer, and they said, he's graduated from parole.
00:40:14
I said, well, can you tell me where he is? And they said, sorry, we can't tell you that. We don't know.
00:40:18
I wanted to try and stop him somehow. I was hoping there was, like, law enforcement or something that could help me.
00:40:25
But no one did. Maybe no one could. And Lloyd Barris, amped up on dark fantasies,
00:40:32
got into his car and pointed it north toward Montana. Coming up, a speeding car.
00:40:43
Speed, sir. 100 miles an hour. And gunfire as Lloyd's anti-government obsession comes to a deadly climax
00:40:52
when Dateline continues. What would Lloyd do now that he was free? Was there ever any doubt?
00:41:13
In May 2017, Lloyd Barris, fresh off parole in California, traveled to Montana to see his firstborn son, Marshall, now 38 years old.
00:41:25
Remember him? After growing up with Lloyd, he'd made a mess of life. His five kids had grown up without him.
00:41:33
He'd struggled with booze, had been charged with burglary. He was wearing an ankle bracelet for that,
00:41:39
but had told his mom, Tracy, he was determined to finally turn his life around. Marsh and I were sitting on the couch together,
00:41:47
and he goes, Mom, I've done some really bad things in my life, but I need you to know something.
00:41:52
I never killed anyone and I don ever intend to Yes he rejoined his family too That weekend they all gone camping together sober and happy
00:42:06
And then Lloyd joined them. The campground was near Canyon Ferry Lake in Montana's Broadwater County.
00:42:13
The county is huge, the size of more than 50 Manhattan Islands. But only 7,000 souls actually live here,
00:42:21
including now former Sheriff Winn Meehan. and just 10 sworn officers. This is a heck of a place to be a sheriff.
00:42:31
Best place to be. There's no better place than Montana. I always tell everybody, you know,
00:42:38
Montana's the last best place to hide. Ted Kaczynski used it. True. One of Meehan's officers was Deputy Mason Moore,
00:42:46
the one with South Carolina in his voice, and the college sweetheart, now wife, who'd stolen his heart the very first time he saw her, Jody.
00:42:56
I was at this party, and he walked up, and my first reaction was, who is that, and I need to find out who he is,
00:43:06
and that was pretty much how that started. So, in other words, you kind of stole him as opposed to...
00:43:14
Pretty much, yeah. My mama didn't raise any fools, so... They had a yen to live in Montana.
00:43:20
moved here in 2011. At first Mason was a stay-at-home dad to their three kids and a volunteer firefighter
00:43:27
but in his heart he was a cop. Had always been a cop. If you asked him why he wanted to be a cop what would he tell you?
00:43:35
He would say that he didn't have a choice that it was what he was supposed to do.
00:43:40
Mason Moore fit in well at the Broadwater County Sheriff's Office. He was a big brother of sorts to dispatcher Kylie Howard.
00:43:49
Mason was hard to understand at first over the radio with his southern accent, but once I got past that, we were a great team.
00:43:59
On Monday, May 15th, while the Barrises were camping in Broadwater County, Deputy Moore began his shift in the afternoon.
00:44:07
He was sleeping during the day, and I was a consultant, so I worked at home. And then I went to pick my daughter up at school,
00:44:15
and he was just kind of waking up when I was leaving the house and I kissed him goodbye.
00:44:22
Just a normal busy day in a busy couple's life. Normal day. That evening at the Broadwater County Sheriff's Office, the phones were dead.
00:44:31
It was a word we don't say in law enforcement, but it was a very quiet night. Unusual.
00:44:36
Very unusual, yes. At 2 a.m., Deputy Moore made his final rounds. He always checked the main businesses before he left.
00:44:46
By that time, the Barristers' camping trip by the lake had taken a turn. It had seemed innocent enough, Lloyd catching up with his newly sober son, Marshall.
00:44:56
They spent time alone in Lloyd's Suburban. They turned on the radio, tuned into some talk shows, and they started drinking.
00:45:06
They drank a lot. They got agitated. Marshall pulled out his semi-automatic, began firing it into the ground,
00:45:14
and then he cut off his ankle bracelet. And by 2.13 a.m., as you can see in the security video,
00:45:21
a white Suburban was parked at a gas station called the Town Pump, just a few blocks from where Deputy Moore was checking businesses.
00:45:29
Less than 10 minutes later, around 2.22 a.m., the deputy passed the Town Pump and turned onto Highway 287,
00:45:36
caught on camera here driving past another business, heading home. Then, six minutes later, at 2.28,
00:45:46
the Suburban passed the same camera, same business, same direction as the deputy.
00:45:52
And on this dark stretch of highway about 25 miles down the road, Deputy Moore's dash cam shows the Suburban roared past his patrol car fast, too fast.
00:46:03
Deputy Moore radioed in. Control 438, southbound 387, law marker 101, white truck.
00:46:13
Dispatcher Kylie Howard answered. 10-4. Speed, sir. 100 miles an hour. Deputy Moore read off the license plate.
00:46:23
It came back to a suburban, registered to Lloyd Barris. He had insurance, no warrants, nothing like that.
00:46:32
Of course, it was Lloyd at the wheel. And five miles into the chase, he wasn't stopping at all.
00:46:38
Instead, he hit the gas. We're coming to the interstate now. I'm coming to the interstate.
00:46:44
99 miles an hour. 99 miles an hour. In any pursuit, Kylie knew, she was required to notify a superior officer.
00:46:53
When they called me, I was literally letting me know when Mason gets him in custody.
00:46:58
But just minutes after that call, out of nowhere, gunfire. You kept calling out?
00:47:17
438. Which means? That's his badge number. I hate when they don't answer me. I'm like, oh, it just makes my heart sink.
00:47:25
I had thought that Mason had crashed because typically in pursuits, that's how they can end.
00:47:30
So what was going on in your mind? Panic. I'm just trying to get some help here. I've got Mason in a pursuit.
00:47:38
Yeah, and he's not answering me. When a deputy doesn't respond to your status checks, that's the worst feeling in the world.
00:47:47
No, it wasn't the worst feeling in the world. Turned out it was not even close. Oh, f***.
00:47:55
Coming up... A deputy down, and a Wild West gunfight. I propped up my gun and I started shooting through my windshield.
00:48:10
Deputy Sheriff Mason Moore had suddenly gone silent. Fear rising in her throat. Dispatcher Kylie Howard kept calling.
00:48:35
Where are you? No answer. Have you made contact with 438? Negative. They had a trooper headed possibly towards them.
00:48:46
When the trooper arrived, he saw this. Oh, f***. That was my 320. I need medical.
00:48:58
Send backup units. Deputy down. That word reached dispatcher Kylie Howard. 320 just checked in with me.
00:49:05
They sent backup units. The deputy's down. They think he's been shot. Oh my God. Oh my God. He's down. He's down.
00:49:13
Kylie called the sheriff. Wynn? No. He's possibly been shot at mile marker 109. Oh, s***. Motherless.
00:49:22
Sheriff Wynn Meehan got out of bed and roared toward the scene some 25 minutes down the road.
00:49:28
And as he drove... Our trooper advises that he has called for a kawana. When they asked for a coroner for Mason, it was like somebody hit me with a truck.
00:49:44
When I looked inside of the car in the driver's seat, there was Mason. And a trooper, a friend of mine, showed up, and I said, do you have a blanket?
00:49:53
And he was like, yes. So he gave it to me, and I covered him up and realized what had transpired by the bullholes that were all over the thing.
00:50:04
Broadwater County Sheriff's Deputy Mason Moore was dead at age 42. That's my biggest fear.
00:50:15
I never wanted to lose an officer. I mean, you know going into this job, it's something that can happen,
00:50:25
but I guess you just don't think that it's going to actually happen, I guess. But it wasn't over.
00:50:33
The white suburban and the killer inside were long gone, vanished in the night. And 50 miles west in the city of Butte, Officer Rich O'Brien was on the graveyard shift.
00:50:43
We were just kind of cruising around, making sure nobody was up to no good. And what happened then?
00:50:48
The dispatch told us that there was a deputy in Broadwater County that had been shot,
00:50:54
and they were unsure of the direction and travel of the vehicle. O'Brien was one of just five officers on duty in the county that night,
00:51:02
under the command of his cousin, Lieutenant John O'Brien. What did you say to them?
00:51:08
To mentally prepare that this might be the night that they have to defend themselves.
00:51:13
And then, there it was, the white suburban. They were doing 110 miles an hour coming off a homestead pass,
00:51:20
so I had to exceed that in order to catch them up. How fast were you going? I think my car hit about 146 miles an hour.
00:51:29
146 miles an hour? Yeah. What kind of car was this? It was a Chevy Impala. It was not the pride of the fleet, so I was just hoping it stayed on four wheels so I could get up there.
00:51:40
The odometer spins quickly at those speeds, 50, 60, 70 miles. And they just weren't stopping?
00:51:49
No, they had no intention of stopping. Lloyd, chased all the way, sped into a fifth county, Captain Austin McHugh's county.
00:51:57
I heard my dispatcher scream my name, and I just said, God, come ride with me. Those were my exact words.
00:52:08
Highway Patrolman Tim Wyckoff joined in, too. They had to be stopped. I mean, they had no regard for anybody's life, mine or anybody else's.
00:52:17
And then, nearly 90 miles from the shooting of Deputy Mason Moore, like something straight out of a movie,
00:52:23
law officers dropped a spike strip across the interstate. The Suburban hit the strip at 100 miles an hour,
00:52:31
punctured three tires. What happened then? It was like a rooster tail of sparks coming from the vehicle.
00:52:38
But it kept going, 60, 70 miles an hour on rims. And a deputy chasing behind, radioed a warning.
00:52:46
He just saw a male take a sniper position in the back of the vehicle. Who was that?
00:52:52
With Lloyd apparently at the wheel, police had no idea. But whoever the shooter was, had what sounded like a semi-automatic rifle.
00:53:00
I remember going around a big sweeping corner, and all of a sudden, it's just pops and muzzle flashes coming out the back window.
00:53:09
It was the scariest moment of my life. Were they coming close? Oh, yeah. I propped up my gun and I started shooting through my windshield.
00:53:22
And that's when my front tire got shot out. Three law officers were now leading the pursuit and taking fire.
00:53:32
John O'Brien, Tim Wyckoff, and Austin McHugh. Then, minutes later, Lloyd Barris finally hit the brakes.
00:53:41
The Suburban jolted to a stop by the side of the highway, and a passenger jumped out, rifle in hand, firing.
00:53:53
You just start feeling the impacts from around sitting in my vehicle As I was getting out of the car a round went to the windshield where I was sitting Right where you had been Right where I been sitting yes sir I threw my AR up over
00:54:07
the steering wheel and started to exchange gunfire. Through your windshield? Yes. What were you firing
00:54:13
at? Muzzle flash. Could you see the actual person there? No, I could see the star-shaped muzzle
00:54:21
flash indicating that it was a rifle. And then suddenly it stopped. You understood you hit your
00:54:30
target. I understood that there was no longer muzzle flash coming from there. The passenger
00:54:35
was down, but Lloyd was still firing with a nine millimeter handgun. How long do you think that
00:54:45
went on. Sometimes the memory feels like it was an eternity, and other times it's just gone in a
00:54:52
second. Then, as if in some old west gunfight, the pistol was shot from Lloyd's hand,
00:54:59
and eventually he complied with police commands. Lloyd Barris was finally in custody
00:55:11
But what happened next? Well, some people might find that hard to understand Coming up
00:55:21
I thought you guys were supposed to like the glasses of peace or something Lloyd's death wish
00:55:28
I don't believe I'm getting locked up I don't know the answer to that I hang you like you're old digital anything.
00:55:34
When Dateline continues. Are you hurt? I don't know how many times you can hear.
00:55:50
Lloyd Barris, his pistol shot from his hand, had been taken into custody on that western Montana highway.
00:55:56
And his passenger, the one wounded while firing a semi-automatic rifle at police?
00:56:01
Go check on my son, please. That's your son? Yeah, Marshall. Marshall, he got hit?
00:56:05
Yeah, he probably did. That's right. It was Lloyd's son, Marshall, who shot and killed Deputy Moore
00:56:12
and was now fighting for his own life. But even then, as the sun was rising 145 miles down the road in Three Forks, Montana,
00:56:24
a doorbell rang. At the home, the Deputy Mason Moore shared with his three children
00:56:30
and his wife, Jody. In my sleep kind of fog, I thought that maybe it was that Mason had forgotten his keys
00:56:39
and our window by the front door, the blinds were halfway up. And when I walked up to the front door,
00:56:47
I saw feet, multiple feet. And I knew right away that something was wrong. And I hurried to open the door
00:56:57
because I thought maybe he's just hurt. and when I opened the door, the sheriff was right there and I saw his face.
00:57:05
She looked at me and slammed it shut. Because I just was immediately angry. And they came into my living room and sat me down and told me that Mason was gone.
00:57:21
and I asked what happened and they told me that he was shot and I was just very angry.
00:57:32
Just felt like I had let him down and that we had all let him down. I just was very angry.
00:57:39
How could you possibly let him down? I think when you love somebody, you want to protect them and keep them safe.
00:57:47
And I felt like I hadn't done that. I remember walking into the funeral home and the funeral director was there and she was asking me questions about what I wanted and picking out a casket.
00:58:05
And I looked out the window and this is May and it's snowing, big fat snowflakes.
00:58:12
And I remember thinking, where am I? This just can't be reality. And that was pretty much the point where I was done with that meeting.
00:58:25
Did you go see him? I saw him in the casket, but his shoulders and head were covered up at my request.
00:58:42
So I was able to put my hand on his hand. but that was all I could do. What followed over the next week was a haze,
00:58:56
a funeral at the Moors' home church, a procession to the airport, followed by flights to take the casket
00:59:04
bearing Mason's body home to South Carolina to be buried in the family plot. A plot where, within nine months,
00:59:11
Mason's father and mother would join him. Did his death, do you think, contribute to theirs?
00:59:17
Absolutely. I am really amazed that his dad survived the funeral service. And what happened to Marshal Barris, the man who'd killed Mason Moore and tried to kill more cops?
00:59:31
He did not survive his wounds. His mom, Tracy, was able to say goodbye to him in the hospital, where Marshal was under police guard.
00:59:41
The captain was so very kind to me. He took my hand and he said, I want you to know that after Marshall was down,
00:59:51
every one of my officers ran to your son to render aid. I don hold anything against those police officers They had to eliminate that threat We don know what else those two could have done that night And as for Lloyd Barris
01:00:05
this was his self-introduction to the cops who set about arresting him. Yeah, I'm just an evil boy.
01:00:14
The worst fears of Lloyd's ex-wives had been realized. One son dead in a gunfight.
01:00:20
Another in prison for shooting down a highway patrol helicopter. Lloyd Barris never stopped talking.
01:00:41
All the way to jail. And in jail, he called reporters, ranted on as long as anybody would listen.
01:01:20
He's just some guy that was acting like some maniac. Lloyd even phoned his elderly mother, who had never stopped communicating with him.
01:01:30
And he bragged about what he'd done. This is what Marshall and I have lived for.
01:01:37
That's what I died for, Mother. I was born to do this, Mother, what I'm doing. By the time Lloyd Barris was set to go to trial, he was among the most hated humans in the state.
01:01:49
The question was, would he ever be punished? And the answer was not obvious. Not at all.
01:02:00
Coming up. You hear these men come back. Another tape would reveal the true horror of that night.
01:02:08
They lodged 20 rounds into the side of Deputy Mason Moore's vehicle. Since the days of the Old West,
01:02:28
few states have had such a long and fabled history with the hangman's noose as Montana.
01:02:34
But it may surprise you to know that no judge here has handed down a death sentence
01:02:39
in the 21st century. Still, many who had heard Barris beg to be executed after his arrest
01:02:46
I thought, why not grant his wish? I said, if we don't file the intent to seek the death penalty, then what actually justifies it?
01:02:59
This is an ambush of a law enforcement officer who was just trying to go home. And these guys killed him because of the uniform that he wore and a car that he drove and a job that he did.
01:03:10
So the Broadwater County attorney filed the intent to seek the death penalty against Lloyd Barris, a decision applauded by Deputy Mason Moore's widow, Jody.
01:03:21
The crime, killing a law enforcement officer in an ambush, let's call it what it was, an execution.
01:03:34
I believe that warrants death. But, a snag. Remember, in California, 17 years earlier, after that high-speed chase that ended in
01:03:48
Jeffrey Barris shooting down a highway patrol helicopter, Lloyd Barris was examined by mental
01:03:53
health professionals and diagnosed with severe paranoid personality disorder. Now, doctors in Montana found Barris suffered from multiple mental illnesses, including
01:04:04
delusional disorder. Stephanie Robles and Dan Gazinski from the Montana Attorney General's
01:04:11
Office. Once we obtained information that he had mental illness, we did not think it was
01:04:15
appropriate to go forward with the death penalty case. Then, because of Lloyd's diagnosed mental
01:04:21
illness, a judge found him incompetent to stand trial. He was sent to a state psychiatric facility
01:04:27
under doctor's care. When I asked why they found that he was incompetent to proceed,
01:04:34
They just said he was too tangential in his thinking, too tangential in the way he conducted conversations.
01:04:39
What the heck does that mean, too tangential? They were saying that he couldn't communicate effectively with his defense attorneys because he was so fixated on this idea of conspiratorial thinking of the government.
01:04:52
At the state hospital, Lloyd Barris refused to take the drugs that might restore him to competency.
01:04:58
So the state asked for permission to force medication. Really the whole case hinged on this. If we were not allowed to forcibly medicate him with antipsychotic medication, then the case would have been over with.
01:05:11
For nearly two years, they argued, until in 2020, Montana's Supreme Court finally ruled in favor of the state forcibly medicating Lloyd Barris, and he was soon deemed competent.
01:05:25
And in September 2021, his trial began with prosecutors quoting Lloyd's own words.
01:05:35
I would accept death. I wish he'd take me out and hang me. I'd accept it. A full acknowledgement of the consequences he deserves.
01:05:45
But even then, Lloyd's story, his long, often violent story. So you'd like to be able to make an argument that says, look at this guy.
01:05:53
for his entire life. He been inculcating his children He been trying to make them into extremists He has made them as extreme as he is But you couldn make that argument Couldn make that argument The judge excluded that from trial and we just had to go on what we had
01:06:08
Ladies and gentlemen. Prosecutors couldn't bring up the California shootout, or most of Lloyd's past.
01:06:15
So they focused on what had happened just before the death of Deputy Moore. and they were able to call Lloyd's granddaughter,
01:06:23
who was in the campground with Lloyd and Marshall, before they left. He made statements that I was born into the militia
01:06:31
and that there was no way out of it, and that I'd make a great lady sniper. And he also told me that all police should be hung.
01:06:42
And then, said prosecutors, before he set out to attack a few rural deputies, He presented his gift to the mother of Marshall's children.
01:06:53
He wrote a document that we refer to at trial as his manifesto. It's talking about anti-government rhetoric.
01:06:59
The night before he killed Mason Moore with his son, he ceremoniously signed it and dated it.
01:07:05
And it was one of the last acts he did before he left with Marshall and killed Deputy Mason Moore.
01:07:11
Of course, they played the tapes you've already seen. Marshall and Lloyd at the town pump gas station,
01:07:17
waiting, prosecutors said, for a deputy to drive by. Then, following Mason Moore down the highway,
01:07:24
and shooting him. But then they showed the jury something you haven't seen. Something hard to listen to.
01:07:35
It was this. Deputy Moore, grievously wounded, sitting in his car by the side of the road,
01:07:41
struggling for breath, keying the radio, but unable to speak. Four minutes go by
01:07:48
when you hear Mason just agonizing in the car. The Barristers had driven away, and then they came back.
01:07:59
And after four minutes, you hear these men come back and decide that they were going to do
01:08:05
what they set out to do, and that was to finish killing a law enforcement officer.
01:08:14
They lodged 20 rounds into the side of Deputy Mason Moore's vehicle. To prosecutors and law officers, the reason was simple.
01:08:29
The Barristers waited to return, hoping more law officers would show up. They were going to get as many cops as they could,
01:08:36
and Lord blessed us when we could have been a lot more. So will the state rule out all the other innocent reasons for the trip than to kill the officer?
01:08:48
Lloyd's defense attorneys declined Dateline's request for an interview, but in court suggested that maybe Marshall was the guilty one.
01:08:57
Maybe it wasn't Lloyd. Maybe it was his son who was solely responsible, that he was just the person driving the vehicle.
01:09:06
What was somewhat shameful about Lloyd Barris' defense that he agreed to was they maligned Marshall, an attempt for the jury to shift blame towards Marshall and that Lloyd would be set free.
01:09:17
But here's a man that his other son is in prison in California based on the encouragement of Lloyd.
01:09:24
And so now when he's caught, he turns against his son that is dead and tries to malign him as a person and make him seem a far more dangerous person than he was in order to set himself free.
01:09:39
The trial took three weeks. The verdict? Less than three hours. On the charge of Calp. 1, delivered homicide by accountability, we, the jury, find the defendant guilty.
01:09:53
Guilty of murder. And yet, Lloyd Barris still might never serve a day behind bars.
01:10:03
Coming up. There would be a potential for him to be released. And a voice from the grave is heard in court.
01:10:10
A host to grow old with you and see our grandkids. That is not to be. This is the man that you took from us.
01:10:21
When Dateline continues. Lloyd Maris had been convicted of multiple felonies for his part in the murder of Deputy Mason Moore.
01:10:40
I think he's one of the most evil people we've ever dealt with. Still, there was no guarantee Barris would spend even a day behind bars.
01:10:50
Montana Law gave Barris another shot at avoiding prison. That is, if he could convince a judge that he could neither appreciate the criminality of his offense
01:10:59
nor comport his behavior to the law. In that case, he'd spend his days in a state psychiatric hospital instead of prison.
01:11:08
And then? So if he were to ever convince the doctors at the state hospital that he was not a danger to society, there would be a potential for him to be released.
01:11:19
And of course, the attorney general's office thought that he should go to prison with not ever having even the remotest possibility of parole.
01:11:27
For more months, the battle went on. The system Lloyd hated, giving him one chance after another, after another.
01:11:35
until April 2022, the Broadwater County Courthouse in Townsend, Montana, nearly five years after the murder of Deputy Mason Moore.
01:11:50
Anything you want to say, Mr. Barris? Anything you want to say? Anybody? It was sentencing day.
01:12:00
Boyd Barris entered the tiny courtroom and walked right past Jody Moore and her twin sons.
01:12:06
They'd gone through high school through this process, right? They were 12, I believe, when Mason was killed,
01:12:15
and they were seniors in high school when the trial was finished up. In the other half of the courtroom, Mason Moore's brothers and sisters in law enforcement,
01:12:26
except for one who was more than a thousand miles away in California. You weren't in the courtroom for the sentencing, were you?
01:12:36
No, I wasn't. Where were you? I was sitting in treatment to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder
01:12:43
and depression and anxiety and things of that and coexisting substance abuse. And you have PTSD?
01:12:50
Yes, I do. Severe. And chronic depression. Yeah. I stood in that building going, I shouldn't be here.
01:13:01
But I was like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it because my life was a wreck.
01:13:06
Did it help? Absolutely. Best decision I ever made. Saved your life, huh? Absolutely.
01:13:14
And others who were there to argue that Lloyd Beres never be released from prison
01:13:19
also still carried scars from that night. like Captain Austin McHugh, who fired the shots that killed Barris' son, Marshall.
01:13:28
This man was once given a significant opportunity by the justice system to change and leave evil behind him.
01:13:35
He chose otherwise. Mason Moore's colleagues in the sheriff's office spoke as well.
01:13:40
Please use all of your authority to help Jody Moore, her children, and the Moore family find peace
01:13:46
by knowing that the evil that took Mason away from them will be a locked way from society forever.
01:13:52
Finally, what little air was left in the room rushed out as Jody Moore stepped to the podium, just a few feet from Lloyd Barris.
01:14:02
Who was that in life? Well, I didn't like it. It was really hard. I've thought about this, what I would say,
01:14:13
and how I would say it for a while, almost five years now. There have been many sleepless nights put into this,
01:14:21
and lots and lots of tears. Did you look at him? Didn't have any choice but to look at him.
01:14:30
And yeah, I looked at him when I was speaking. I looked at him and talked to him.
01:14:36
Did you see anything in his eyes? I never saw any remorse. Didn see any emotion any caring in his eyes So I didn really hold back with my comments
01:14:53
Our daughter is now in middle school. Our boys did not have their dad for their first elk hunt.
01:15:01
Mr. Barris is pure evil. The world seemed to stop spinning when Jody got to the final part of her statement.
01:15:08
It was a letter from Mason. What can I say? I hope to grow old with you and see our grandkids.
01:15:19
That is not to be. Like many law officers, Mason had tucked away a note for Jody.
01:15:28
A just-in-case note. Don't dwell on the manner of my death. You married a cop, and cops tend to die by one death.
01:15:40
If it is a person that got me, and he or she is brought to trial, and they are convicted or otherwise, don't let it rule your life.
01:15:52
Make sure you enjoy life. I enjoyed every moment with you. I love you now and always.
01:16:00
Your loving husband. This is the man that you took from us. You robbed me of being able to spend the rest of my life with him.
01:16:13
And with that, it was Lloyd Barris' turn to say something. But would he? What could he say to that?
01:16:23
Coming up, his son Alma had something to say. He thinks he's a patriot, but he's just doing stuff for himself.
01:16:31
He's a coward. What would the judge say when it was time for the sentence? One more time in a Montana courtroom,
01:16:52
Lloyd Barris' government-paid attorneys fought to keep him out of prison. This is Greg Jackson.
01:16:58
We've heard talk about him being evil. Mr. Barris is seriously mentally ill. And as a result of that,
01:17:09
should be, in spite of what he has done, be treated humanely. We strongly urge that you consider sending him
01:17:17
to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services. And anyone listening to Lloyd's final statement
01:17:25
could be forgiven for being a little uncertain of what he was trying to say Yes Your Honor I said throughout nearly five years of different court hearings
01:17:39
I'm truly sorry for the loss of, for Moore family's loss. my son I don't see how anybody could be more
01:17:53
upset than I am for what happened to you. It's just like Officer Moore what did he do? He deserved what he got
01:18:01
I mean I don't know I don't even know him so I have no idea I mean is it just like
01:18:06
somebody that gets cancer this life has a lot of things that are unexplainable happen to us
01:18:15
I guess that's all I've got to say. Minutes later, the judge pronounced her sentence.
01:18:27
Mr. Barris, I'm sentencing you to life in prison. You will not be eligible for parole.
01:18:32
I think the protection of society requires that you not be eligible for parole. It was a sentence that echoed across Montana,
01:18:44
a relief for those officers who captured Lloyd and later received the National Association of Police Organization's Top Cop Award.
01:18:53
It was also a sentence that echoed across time to Lloyd's childhood friend, Mike.
01:19:00
I mean, I love the guy. He was my best friend. And to see him go from a happy, active, religious, wanting the best in the world guy to a nut crazy white supremacist that wanted to kill people.
01:19:17
It was deeply upsetting. But Lloyd's second wife, Deborah, the one who all those years before had to flee his abuse and spirit away her children in the middle of the night, heard the news and relaxed a little.
01:19:32
Let's just say that Lloyd being in prison is the best place. A lot more people feel safe.
01:19:40
Lloyd's son Alma wrote an open letter to the people of Montana, apologizing for his father's crimes.
01:19:47
Alma had grown up to become the antithesis of his father, the son of an anti-government activist who joined the U.S. Army,
01:19:54
served a year in Iraq, and now works for the federal government. He called Lloyd a false patriot.
01:20:02
What do you mean by that? He likes to use the government conveniently, quoting the Constitution like it's scripture,
01:20:11
but part of building a good society is working together And if it your way or the highway you not doing any good for your country He thinks he a patriot
01:20:25
but he's just doing stuff for himself. He's a coward. A sentiment shared by Lloyd's first wife, Tracy,
01:20:34
the mother of a dead son and of another still in a California prison. I have thought so many times,
01:20:42
maybe if I'd done something different, maybe if I'd gone back 40 years and made a different choice,
01:20:48
you know, Officer Moore would still be alive, Marshall would still be alive, Jeffrey wouldn't be in prison.
01:20:54
You can't not feel guilty. Sheriff Wynn Meehan has escaped the demons that haunted him before and after Deputy Moore's murder,
01:21:03
thanks to treatment and therapy. He even learned to do yoga. Like I said, the best decision I ever made in my life
01:21:11
was to go get help. You know, and accept, you know, just get to understand that, you know, one, you have to be vulnerable.
01:21:19
Because, I mean, you've got to come clean. You're a big, tough cop. You're not supposed to be vulnerable.
01:21:22
No, no, no. And you're not. But it's in order to get where you need to be, it's what you need to do.
01:21:30
And then there's Jody Moore, who did not, as many might have, returned to the Carolinas where she grew up.
01:21:38
Why did you decide to stay here in Montana? because my kids are my top priority and they are doing great.
01:21:49
And also Mason lost his life here. You know, I mean, his blood was spilled here.
01:21:56
And I just didn't feel like I could or should leave. She's opened a bookstore. It's called Book Therapy and Moore.
01:22:09
It's the headquarters for the Mason Moore Foundation, a charity Jody founded to raise money for safety equipment for cops who need it.
01:22:17
The group's motto? It's something Mason said to her a long time ago. Love wins. He loved me, and all he wanted to do was to try to make this a better place
01:22:33
and leave his mark. And I think he did. That's all for this edition of Dateline.
01:22:46
We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.
01:22:53
I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.