00:00:06
the wife of a respected police officer
00:00:08
was murdered in her home but the motive
00:00:11
was unclear
00:00:13
the crime went unsolved for more than a
00:00:15
decade until a cold case unit took a
00:00:19
fresh look and found evidence on the
00:00:22
nine one one call that had previously
00:00:24
been
00:00:25
overlooked
00:00:27
i got a call felt man stay on the line
00:00:29
with me
00:00:31
[Music]
00:00:39
[Music]
00:00:56
[Music]
00:00:57
most everyone in the small town of
00:00:59
springboro ohio knew jim and vicki
00:01:03
barton
00:01:04
jim was a lieutenant in the local police
00:01:06
department a rising star who many
00:01:09
believed would one day be chief of
00:01:12
police
00:01:13
he's always been very thorough very
00:01:16
professional
00:01:17
easy to to work with and easy to get a
00:01:19
hold of
00:01:20
his wife vicki was a nurse supervisor at
00:01:23
the local hospital
00:01:25
she loved her work
00:01:27
she was a very compassionate person so i
00:01:30
knew she was very good at what she did
00:01:34
one night after work jim returned home
00:01:37
and found everything in disarray
00:01:42
in the bedroom
00:01:43
he found his wife
00:01:45
she had been shot to death
00:01:53
my 911 has just been killed i think
00:01:56
where she is
00:01:57
this is the senate
00:01:59
there was a pill over her head
00:02:01
and she's not breathing and she's got
00:02:03
her clothes off i don't know what's
00:02:05
what's going on but give me some give me
00:02:07
some help out here dispatch right now
00:02:09
[Music]
00:02:11
just getting there was the first thing i
00:02:13
wanted to do
00:02:14
a lot of things were going through my
00:02:15
mind knowing jim was a policeman did
00:02:17
someone did someone try to hurt him hurt
00:02:20
his family
00:02:21
when paramedics arrived they pronounced
00:02:24
vicky barton dead at the scene
00:02:26
she had been shot three times in the
00:02:28
head execution style
00:02:31
i found that odd
00:02:33
two behind the ear that was different
00:02:36
we never did really come to a full
00:02:38
understanding of
00:02:39
was it overkill
00:02:41
we just don't know in what order they
00:02:42
occurred
00:02:44
the motive didn't appear to be robbery
00:02:47
vicky's jewelry was still in the bedroom
00:02:50
and jim's gun collection had been
00:02:53
ransacked but nothing was missing
00:02:56
investigators found no foreign
00:02:58
fingerprints in the house
00:03:00
they dusted four feet high on those
00:03:02
walls all the way back
00:03:04
and
00:03:05
nothing
00:03:08
they dusted the bedroom
00:03:11
nothing
00:03:13
at the autopsy the medical examiner
00:03:15
identified the murder weapon as a 22
00:03:18
caliber
00:03:19
he also found evidence that vicky had
00:03:21
been sexually assaulted during the
00:03:24
attack
00:03:25
and bitten
00:03:27
i had swapped this area and collected
00:03:30
saliva and that was in the next lab they
00:03:33
were able to recover dna of the
00:03:36
person who had bitter
00:03:38
this dna did not match anyone in the
00:03:41
database of known criminal offenders
00:03:44
as a precaution investigators also
00:03:47
compared the dna to vicki's husband jim
00:03:50
and it also didn't match
00:03:53
who would do something to her
00:03:56
she was the most likable person
00:03:59
she could get along with anyone
00:04:04
earlier on the day of the murder
00:04:06
vicki called her husband to say that a
00:04:08
young man had come to the door needing
00:04:10
help because his car had run out of gas
00:04:13
and jim didn't like that and he said
00:04:14
what'd you do i hope you put a gun in
00:04:16
his head she goes no and you know it was
00:04:18
okay jim he just won a gas he was a very
00:04:20
polite young man and
00:04:22
you know i got him some gas
00:04:24
he left
00:04:25
was it possible
00:04:26
that the man was actually casing the
00:04:30
barton home
00:04:31
and was the one who committed the murder
00:04:35
it could have been planned the whole
00:04:36
thing i mean they could have targeted
00:04:38
jim and vicki
00:04:40
or it could have been totally random
00:04:42
i don't like to arrive at a decision too
00:04:44
quick
00:04:47
but
00:04:49
i didn't like what i was seeing i'll
00:04:50
leave it at that
00:04:56
the execution-style murderer vicki
00:04:59
barton a police lieutenant's wife rocked
00:05:02
the small town of springboro ohio when
00:05:05
we're talking about a woman being
00:05:08
murdered in her home in the middle of
00:05:09
the day in warren county
00:05:11
that was big news that was country
00:05:14
that's where people went to get away
00:05:16
from bad things so it was big news
00:05:19
police had to consider whether someone
00:05:22
jim barton once arrested had sought
00:05:24
revenge
00:05:26
there has never been
00:05:28
a murder
00:05:29
of anyone connected to a law enforcement
00:05:31
officer in this county
00:05:34
that i can remember
00:05:36
we've had officers killed
00:05:39
but never a family member and never a
00:05:41
homicide
00:05:43
investigators checked ex-convicts from
00:05:46
jim's case files but didn't come up with
00:05:48
any leads
00:05:50
days passed then weeks
00:05:53
and no new information surfaced
00:05:57
on the one-year anniversary of vicki's
00:05:59
murder
00:06:01
the case remained unsolved
00:06:03
the case was worked very heavily
00:06:05
especially because it was a police
00:06:07
officer's wife that was murdered and
00:06:10
they went through
00:06:12
every lead that they had
00:06:14
jim barton went on with his life
00:06:17
i offered to just lend an ear if he
00:06:20
needed a friend to talk to that had
00:06:23
known her
00:06:24
and he asked me for my phone number he
00:06:28
wrote it down said i will probably call
00:06:30
you
00:06:32
and he did
00:06:33
the very next night
00:06:36
fifteen months after vicky's murder he
00:06:38
married marianne lacy vicky's childhood
00:06:41
friend and the bridesmaid at their
00:06:43
wedding
00:06:45
but the marriage was in trouble from the
00:06:47
start within months marianne started
00:06:50
noticing strange behavior
00:06:53
she said jim spent hours alone in the
00:06:55
darkened basement
00:06:58
it was very quiet and i never knew what
00:07:00
he was doing
00:07:02
and that just that really put me into a
00:07:04
panic
00:07:06
after 17 months the couple divorced
00:07:11
meanwhile investigators never gave up
00:07:13
the search for vicki's killer
00:07:16
this was something that haunted that
00:07:18
community out there it was haunting a
00:07:21
scary mystery and
00:07:23
and people known to the community and
00:07:26
loved and respected it needed to be
00:07:28
resolved then four years after the
00:07:32
murder
00:07:33
police got their first real break
00:07:37
gary henson a small-time criminal was
00:07:40
arrested on a drug charge
00:07:43
during police questioning he said
00:07:46
he knew something about vicki barton's
00:07:49
murder
00:07:52
he kind of started crying and broke down
00:07:53
to the detective and said i have
00:07:55
something i need to tell you and he told
00:07:57
him that his brother was involved in the
00:07:59
murder of the police officer's wife
00:08:02
henson's half-brother
00:08:04
william phelps told him about the crime
00:08:11
phelps said it was supposed to be a
00:08:13
robbery but his accomplice probably high
00:08:16
on drugs lost control sexually assaulted
00:08:20
vicki barton
00:08:21
then killed her
00:08:23
a background check revealed william
00:08:26
phelps was not at work on the day vicky
00:08:28
was murdered
00:08:30
unfortunately he was unavailable for
00:08:32
questioning
00:08:34
phelps killed himself just three months
00:08:36
after vicki barton's murder
00:08:39
he acted strange that he actually went
00:08:41
through a paranoid stage
00:08:43
sleeping with a gun and making sure the
00:08:44
windows were locked every night and
00:08:47
he put traps outside his window to make
00:08:49
alarm in case somebody would come up
00:08:52
he acted like a guy that was very afraid
00:08:54
after the homicide
00:08:55
and gary henson said that phelps never
00:08:58
revealed the identity of his accomplice
00:09:01
as a result of what gary henson told
00:09:03
them they then exhumed the body of his
00:09:05
brother will phelps to try to determine
00:09:07
if the dna that was found on vicki's
00:09:09
body was the same
00:09:12
forensic pathologist dr lee lehmann
00:09:14
relied on will phelps teeth for the dna
00:09:18
the reason we extract teeth for dna is
00:09:20
because inside the teeth the cells are
00:09:25
held in calcium
00:09:27
very firm hard materials in the enamel
00:09:31
and it's not contaminated by bacteria
00:09:34
and decomposition
00:09:36
william phelps dna
00:09:39
did not match the saliva on vicki
00:09:41
barton's body
00:09:43
gary henson's dna didn't match either
00:09:46
we have evidence that he was in jail at
00:09:48
the time of her murder and there was no
00:09:49
way he could have been that person
00:09:52
it was another
00:09:54
dead end
00:09:55
i got up and took a long walk in fact i
00:09:57
left the office i drove around for a
00:09:59
while
00:10:01
thinking where do we go next
00:10:05
another four years went by
00:10:07
then
00:10:08
a cold case unit reopened the
00:10:11
investigation of vicki barton's murder
00:10:14
they were particularly interested in jim
00:10:16
barton's comment to his colleague at the
00:10:19
murder scene
00:10:21
he told me he said they killed her man
00:10:23
those murdering bastards they killed her
00:10:26
but how did jim barton know
00:10:29
there was more than one perpetrator you
00:10:32
don't talk about them and they
00:10:34
unless you know who them and they are
00:10:39
[Music]
00:10:42
eight years after vicki barton's murder
00:10:44
the warren county sheriff's office in
00:10:46
ohio formed a cold case unit
00:10:49
specifically to reopen the investigation
00:10:54
they started at the very beginning by
00:10:56
listening to the
00:10:58
jim barton 911
00:11:00
after finding his wife's body
00:11:03
i'm checking the rest of the house
00:11:04
[Music]
00:11:07
all my stuff's laying out in here there
00:11:09
oh man
00:11:12
i gotta call phelp man stay on the line
00:11:15
with me
00:11:16
we were beginning some realization here
00:11:18
that there's something to this or
00:11:19
something more to this
00:11:20
did he say
00:11:22
he had to call for help
00:11:24
or
00:11:25
that he had to call phelps i got a call
00:11:29
man
00:11:31
an informant identified william phelps
00:11:34
as one of the men involved in vicki
00:11:36
barton's murder
00:11:38
and it sounded like vicky's husband jim
00:11:40
mentioned phelps name on the 911 call
00:11:44
oh man
00:11:47
i got a call man
00:11:50
jim barton still a lieutenant with the
00:11:52
springboro police insisted he said he
00:11:56
needed to call
00:11:57
for help
00:11:59
he said he didn't know anyone named
00:12:01
phelps
00:12:02
he was already on 9-1-1 so there's no
00:12:04
reason or need to call for help
00:12:06
and again
00:12:08
the word that i heard was phelps
00:12:10
to find out what jim barton said on the
00:12:12
911 tape
00:12:14
investigators turned to dr robert fox a
00:12:18
faculty member of ohio state university
00:12:21
a linguist and expert on acoustic
00:12:24
phonics
00:12:25
speech recognition is a science we put a
00:12:27
lot of money into it but nothing is good
00:12:30
as the human ear and the human
00:12:31
perceptual system in understanding
00:12:33
speech in part because human listeners
00:12:35
are also human speakers and there's a
00:12:38
very close connection between those two
00:12:41
dr fox was asked if he could determine
00:12:44
if jim barton said
00:12:46
phelps
00:12:47
or
00:12:48
for help
00:12:50
and to eliminate any potential bias
00:12:53
that was all he was told
00:12:55
[Music]
00:12:57
911 my wife has just been killed i think
00:13:01
where she is
00:13:04
dr fox took the 911 call and broke it
00:13:07
down into wave forms visual pictures
00:13:10
that detailed the energy of voice and
00:13:13
cadence
00:13:15
he was particularly interested in two
00:13:17
groups of sounds vowels which are soft
00:13:20
and fricatives or hard sounds
00:13:23
fricatives include sounds like f as in
00:13:28
frank and the reason it's interesting is
00:13:30
that in this particular
00:13:33
call
00:13:34
one of the critical issues with whether
00:13:36
he said f as in phelp or fine or farm or
00:13:41
whether there was an h in there that
00:13:43
might have indicated that he said help
00:13:46
give me some
00:13:48
dr fox used a computer program to
00:13:50
perform a spectrum analysis of the
00:13:53
sounds associated with individual
00:13:56
letters in the recording
00:13:58
after i had isolated a number of
00:14:01
different f's for example in mr barton's
00:14:04
voice i then compared these different
00:14:06
f's
00:14:07
in a systematic way one to another i
00:14:10
also excised several examples of mr
00:14:13
barton saying h and i compared those to
00:14:16
the fricatives give me some help
00:14:18
give me some help
00:14:22
when the key part of the tape only two
00:14:25
and a half seconds was analyzed
00:14:28
the result was clear i got a call man
00:14:32
barton was saying a simple
00:14:34
f sound
00:14:36
as in
00:14:37
phelps
00:14:40
he was not saying something more complex
00:14:43
such as
00:14:44
for help
00:14:46
i must admit that this 911 tape was the
00:14:49
clearest tape i'd ever heard of that
00:14:51
fashion very easy to understand very
00:14:53
easy to analyze
00:14:55
and the audio analysis also showed
00:14:58
something
00:14:59
unexpected
00:15:01
jim barton
00:15:02
was moving things around the house while
00:15:06
he was talking on the telephone
00:15:09
lieutenant
00:15:12
[Music]
00:15:15
you shouldn't be doing this he was an
00:15:17
evidence technician he's a trained
00:15:18
evidence technician he knows he
00:15:20
shouldn't be touching or moving anything
00:15:22
in that house
00:15:24
did you have anything to do with your
00:15:25
home being burglarized that day no i did
00:15:27
that did you have anything to do with
00:15:29
your wife's murder that day nothing
00:15:32
jim barton still maintained his
00:15:34
innocence and volunteered to take a
00:15:36
polygraph test
00:15:39
jim barton failed the test
00:15:43
when news of barton's possible
00:15:45
involvement became public
00:15:50
a local waitress came forward to say she
00:15:52
saw jim barton and william phelps
00:15:54
sitting together in her restaurant
00:15:57
she saw jim barton talking to well felt
00:16:00
she saw them together jim barton denied
00:16:03
knowing will phelps but she testified
00:16:05
that she had seen them together in the
00:16:06
past
00:16:09
ten years after the murder
00:16:11
jim barton was arrested and charged with
00:16:13
complicity to commit involuntary
00:16:16
manslaughter
00:16:18
the police informant gary henson now
00:16:21
revealed one last piece of information
00:16:25
he had previously withheld
00:16:28
he told our investigators that jim
00:16:30
barton had contacted his brother
00:16:32
and
00:16:34
said i needed
00:16:35
my wife scared
00:16:37
and could you do a burglary to scare her
00:16:40
but why would jim barton
00:16:43
want to scare his wife
00:16:46
when that question
00:16:47
was finally answered no one
00:16:50
not even jim's best friends
00:16:53
could believe it
00:16:54
[Music]
00:17:00
investigators wondered why jim barton a
00:17:03
15-year veteran of the springboro police
00:17:05
department would hire others to
00:17:08
intimidate and frighten his wife vicky
00:17:11
then
00:17:12
they remembered that jim barton had
00:17:15
actively campaigned for the job of
00:17:17
police chief
00:17:19
but to get that position
00:17:21
he had to live within the city limits of
00:17:24
springboro and apparently vicky didn't
00:17:27
want to move from their 10-acre farm
00:17:29
located outside of town that's why we
00:17:32
think he did this he wanted to scare his
00:17:34
wife off of the farm they were in a
00:17:36
remote desolate area into the city where
00:17:38
he would then be able to apply for chief
00:17:40
jim wanted to scare vicki he hired these
00:17:42
people to come in and scare
00:17:45
from some of the testimony i heard or
00:17:47
listening to the cold case he actually
00:17:49
paid these people an extra
00:17:51
dollar amount to fire one shot above
00:17:53
vicki's head
00:17:57
investigators believe
00:17:59
that it was william phelps who knocked
00:18:01
on vicki's door telling her he ran out
00:18:04
of gas
00:18:05
and that he did so
00:18:06
to make sure she was alone
00:18:10
[Music]
00:18:14
phelps later returned to the house with
00:18:16
an accomplice intending to rob her
00:18:21
[Music]
00:18:28
instead his accomplice possibly high on
00:18:31
drugs lost control and sexually
00:18:34
assaulted vicky then he killed her
00:18:37
because she could have identified them
00:18:41
[Music]
00:18:49
prosecutors believe
00:18:51
jim barton came home expecting his wife
00:18:54
to tell him about the robbery
00:18:56
instead
00:18:57
he found she had been murdered
00:19:02
he called 911
00:19:05
but according to audio experts mumbled
00:19:08
something incriminating almost as if he
00:19:11
was talking to himself
00:19:14
i'm checking the brush the rest of the
00:19:16
house
00:19:18
all my stuff's laying out in here there
00:19:21
oh man
00:19:27
william phelps killed himself three
00:19:30
months after vicky's murder
00:19:33
most likely because of his involvement
00:19:35
in this case
00:19:36
he did not leave a note and
00:19:38
his wife wondered for years what
00:19:40
happened and why he committed suicide
00:19:43
ironically jim barton moved into
00:19:46
springboro shortly after vicky's murder
00:19:49
but he never achieved his dream of
00:19:51
becoming police chief
00:19:53
he was passed over for the promotion
00:19:56
three different times
00:19:58
before the trial
00:20:00
jim barton was offered a plea bargain in
00:20:02
return for identifying phelps accomplice
00:20:06
but he refused he always insisted he
00:20:09
knew nothing about the crime
00:20:11
it's hard to say what jim barton knows
00:20:13
and doesn't know we plan at some point
00:20:15
to go to him and once this is all
00:20:17
resolved the appeals are over and ask
00:20:19
him if he can help us out with who that
00:20:20
other person is
00:20:21
but it has not happened yet
00:20:24
jim barton was convicted of complicity
00:20:27
to commit manslaughter
00:20:29
he was sentenced to a minimum of 15
00:20:31
years in prison had it not been for the
00:20:35
forensic analysis of jim's 9-1-1 call
00:20:39
the case might never have been solved
00:20:43
jim barton is where he needs to be
00:20:45
doesn't necessarily settle well since
00:20:47
it's a cop but again it's the truth a
00:20:49
crime was committed and
00:20:51
justice has been served
00:20:53
these are pros and when you're a pro
00:20:55
it's real simple
00:20:57
no one gets away with murder
00:20:59
i don't care what uniform you're wearing
00:21:01
no one gets away with murder
00:21:14
[Music]
00:21:22
[Music]
00:21:36
[Music]
00:21:45
you
